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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

ha, nice. David himself got the 1000th post. :)
 
Hi, just spent two days catching up on this thread and so wish more threads were as concise and interesting. Refreshing to see lack of flames and over opinionated POV's. My first question is in relation to reflecting off cards/boards for interiors. Have you tested or is there any knowledge on using boards that have gradients printed on them? To get that fall off affect? or is the effect just to soft to work with?
 
Usually you would use a Double of Single Net flag to feather-off the intensity of a bounce or diffused light. A graduated bounce card would probably just be less efficient and less soft. I have wondered though about creating large grey cards, because sometimes a white card has the right amount of softness from a bounce, but is too bright.
 
David,

I assume you have used the F900 in various shoots. Have you had problems with CA in some of the B4 zooms like the Fujinons? How big of an issue was it for you? Have you avoided these lenses because of this?

Thanks,
Phil
www.artbeats.com

PS: Will you be attending NAB?
 
I was reading your interview on http://www.fromscripttodvd.com/mullen_interview.htm, and if I understand correctly, you mentioned something along the lines of telephoto lenses producing images which are both more abstract (hence potentially more pleasing as stand-alone images), and less immersive (hence less useful for pulling the audience into the film).

Is that correct, would you say that using a long lens is a short-term investment which produces a more pleasing frame on-the-spot, but ultimately hurts the immersion into the world of the story?

edit: I am asking this because I usually get this impression that deep focus and short lenses immerse the viewer better, but I sometimes get the opposite impression: that using a long lens with a very open framing on something which is geographically at the center of the scene (with other elements partially appearing only as non-specific blobs) gives this feeling of being at the heart the scene. It's a bit confusing: is there a general tendency of short lenses being just 'better' for the drama?


Thank you.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
Usually you would use a Double of Single Net flag to feather-off the intensity of a bounce or diffused light. A graduated bounce card would probably just be less efficient and less soft. I have wondered though about creating large grey cards, because sometimes a white card has the right amount of softness from a bounce, but is too bright.
Click to expand...

Thank you. So how far from the reflected material would the net flag go generally. It there a percentage point between reflector and subject or is it just a matter of playing around to get the desired effect?
 
Generally the net is far enough away from the bounce (or close enough to the subject being netted) that the object you don't want to get netted is facing the open gap between the net and the bounce card. If the net were just up against part of the card, all you are doing is making the bounce darker overall.
 
benfilm said:
I was reading your interview on http://www.fromscripttodvd.com/mullen_interview.htm, and if I understand correctly, you mentioned something along the lines of telephoto lenses producing images which are both more abstract (hence potentially more pleasing as stand-alone images), and less immersive (hence less useful for pulling the audience into the film).

Is that correct, would you say that using a long lens is a short-term investment which produces a more pleasing frame on-the-spot, but ultimately hurts the immersion into the world of the story?

Thank you.
Click to expand...

I don't mean emotionally immersive, just physically immersive on the big screen, that a moving (forwards or back) wide-angle shot on the big screen tends to create a stronger sense of motion and mimics human viewing experiences, plus you often see more of the location surrounding the actor. However a long lens with shallow focus is more selective in what you see in focus, so that can also make an object stand out more for the viewer and perhaps minimize a distracting background. There is no right or wrong choice.
 
What was the general rule of thumb for falloff (something to do with inverse...). Is there a more practical method of understanding and making use of it? I love the shadow falloff on classical paintings (they use candle light, right?)... but can that be created on set or is it done in post? My lights are always too bright, not bright enough, etc. I usually end up getting the level of control I want on my shadows in post. Maybe I just don't have enough equipment (flags, filters, scrims, nets, etc.)?
 
If i could just add to jings comments. Do you sometimes use two light sources in order to create artificial fall off? I was looking at a highlight the other day with my own eyes (i think i was looking at a bird or something) and i noticed the highlight to my eye was really bright (blown out) right in the centre of the reflection from the sun, but detail just around this highlight was maintained in brightness. Could this be artificialy reproduced by having an ultrafine spot in centre and another light on the same point but a wider area?
 
I just wanted to ask also, when you look at the world through your own eyes to determine lighting approaches do you consider perception and how that affects the dynamic range, as well as focus? If I can explain, I was driving around the other night and stopped at a set of traffic lights and as you do every now and then, I thought wow what a nice scene. So I thought how would I light the inside of the car to get this view? I looked outside onto the street and assuming that the vision of the story occurred outside (say a person walking past the car) but wanted to get it wide from the driver’s perspective. So in my peripheral vision, I noted how I saw my hands on the driving wheel in relation. As you can imaging the focus was out but also the steering wheel was fairly dark with no detail. So I changed focus onto the steering wheel and noticed there was very nice (and fine) detail on it and my hands (from the street lights above). So what I am trying to say without intending to create a complication is, If I lit this scene and I was considering reality perception, should I care less about lighting the wheel as I saw it when I was looking at it through the story's eyes or do I light it from the perspective of how I saw it when I focused upon it? I notice with a lot of reality cinematography the type you talk about and the current strong trend in "Hollywood" movies. Is that it doesn't necessarily take this perceptual illusion into consideration. It's not my intention to condemn or anything like that, rather, an artist wants to extend themselves, and so I just wanted to know have you had these thoughts and if so how do you approach it in lighting style? I can image coming up to a scene and saying to myself right this is what I see in the composition but in the story that may not be the POV of the plot line.
 
The inverse square law technically applies to a point source only, but it can loosely be applied to soft sources in that the fall-off is more dramatic when the subject is close to the source than when far away. In other words, someone's face only three feet from a 6'x6' soft light will get much brighter and darker when the person leans towards or away from that light, whereas a 12'x12' soft light farther away may produce a similar shadow softness... but the fall-off will be less dramatic as a person moves a few feet closer or farther away from the source.

There is no right or wrong amount of fall-off, it just depends on the shot and the scene action. Sometimes you want the fall-off to be less extreme because the dynamic range of the camera doesn't handle big jumps in brightness well.

As for the other question:
Some people will combine a soft key mixed with a hard light (usually an eyelight) to get a hard glint in the eye.

And the other:
Your eye has the ability to quickly shift focus and exposure as it glances around, which tends to average out or balance extremes in exposure, at least, it appears to. Sometimes you need to light a scene with a less extreme contrast range to simulate how your eyes can handle the range, other times you actually want to do an in-camera exposure change to compensate as your eye might when to glances from one area to another.
 
David

In the 80's there was this massive trend to use smoke to create some nice (and not so nice overkill) atmosphere.

Is smoke still widely used if even not terribly noticed or has that trend gone away ?
 
I used smoke quite a bit on a couple of my recent features, so I'm still doing it... though probably in lighter levels than used in some 1980's movies. Certainly it's used less these days, except for period and fantasy films where you want shafts of light all the time.

But you still see smoke used a lot by Kaminski in Spielberg's movies, for example.

These days, smoke is reserved more for select scenes -- old basements, hazy bars (though no one is allowed to smoke anymore in many bars...), anything meant to look dusty, etc.
 
Hi David.

Do you know of any feature film that have been entirely shot and edited in camera....Basically one take-stop new setup, or freeze and then start?

I supose many super8 family films have that style and perhaps documentaries and there are several very famous long takes lasting much longer then 5 minutes without interuption, maybe more I have no idea.

But treating the subject in a scene and shifting focus to different objects without depending on panning or zooming but cutting in camera, as many cuts as a normal feature length film would have.

Have you played with this tecnique on your own?
what do you think it gives if anything?
Is there a theory behind it as with most other approaches to filmic grammar?
if so who has codified it?

Thanks very much for your wisdom and patience.

DogDay
 
dogday said:
Do you know of any feature film that have been entirely shot and edited in camera....Basically one take-stop new setup, or freeze and then start?



DogDay
Click to expand...

According to Wikipedia "at least two theatrically-released feature films, Timecode and Russian Ark are filmed in one single take."
 
No. I've done it in a 1-minute Super-8 short film and it was a pain in the a--- because the character jumps from Los Angeles to Death Valley and then back to where they started, so I had to drive out there to Death Valley and then drive back just to shoot the cut back to the same shot.

There's no reason to shoot a feature this way. It makes sense in Super-8 mainly because it eliminates splices.

Doing a movie in one take is different than doing a feature-length movie with an average of 1000 cuts, but all cut in-camera. Besides, many cameras don't make clean cuts shot to shot, and most feature-length movies are not silent, but have dialogue, which makes all that cutting in-camera even harder.
 
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